Much talk has taken place in the VSCA community since last month, after a wild and at times crazy, crash-filled Round 4 at Laguna Seca.
Teams, drivers and organizers alike have come forward, the racing standards were at an all-time low. While the four class winners came through victorious to celebrate in the winner’s circle, the overwhelming majority of the grid had very little to feel happy about.
“I don’t know what the answer is, but VSCA has got to do something. This is out of control.”, an unnamed crew member said after the race at Laguna Seca.
So it was to little surprise when VSCA announced several regulation changes ahead of this weekend’s Round 5 at Circuit of the Americas.
To start things off, teams will no longer be limited to a preset number of incident reports per race.
“One of the issues that we have seen at Laguna Seca was not only the number of incidents on the track, but also the fact that many of them ended up not getting reported by the teams, which made the penalty system less efficient than it could have been.”, said series director Benjamin Fischer.
Secondly, Race Control decisions marked as “Racing Incident” may now carry penalties for all involved entries and drivers.
Thirdly, VSCA is introducing a new system of track marshals that may report incidents to Race Control, especially in the event that incidents have not been reported by teams.
A fourth and perhaps the most drastic change will be a new disqualification incident limit. For this weekend’s two hours and 40 minutes long event, cars will receive a drive-through penalty at 14 incident points and face disqualification from the event upon reaching 21 incident points.
“We believe these changes are sending a loud message, that our top priority is to promote clean and fair racing. And that starts with all teams and drivers primarily focusing on avoiding incidents. We believe good hard racing and putting premium focus on avoiding incidents aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact it would be easy to argue one benefits from the other.”, Fischer continued.
Several good championship battles to watch heading into COTA
Aside from GT AM class that is dominated by the #5 Screeching Moose Mercedes team that enters COTA on an almost unbelievable streak of five wins in a row, all classes are in the midst of tight championship points battles.
In GTP class, the #15 Composite Performance Cadillac took the lead after winning at Laguna Seca, with the #3 Mayer Simspeed Performance Porsche trailing 41 points behind in second.
In LMP2, the #18 Gowin Racing Dallara picked up its third win at Laguna Seca and is leading the points table by a margin of 48 points over the #46 Rising Panda Racing Dallara who won at Sebring in March.
Standings in GT PRO have tightened considerably after Laguna Seca, as points leaders #84 Fischer Motorsport failed to crack the top-five at the Californian track. Their team-mates the #44 Fischer Motorsport Porsche sits in second place in the standings, only 56 points behind.
In GT AM, everybody is hoping for a slip-up by championship leaders #5 Screeching Moose Motorsports, to cut into the 170-point cushion they have built over the #80 Digital Chicane Ferrari that is closest in second.
Rain unlikely, albeit not impossible onSaturday
Weather forecast for Saturday’s Lone Star Grand Prix predicts a 21% chance of rain during the warmup session, but rain during the race, which starts 5:35 pm local time appears to be highly unlikely.
“We hope to give the fans and spectators on GreenFlag TV a good show and hope for good weather. But if it’s going to rain, we’ll deal with that as well. We hope it will be a good race, either way.”, says Fischer.
GreenFlag TV will broadcast the Lone Star Grand Prix live, starting 15:50 GMT Saturday on YouTube. A total of 54 entries are registered for the event, with the #10 Acura of NGC Esports Team by Rubis Gás, the #333 Tri-State Racing Dallara and the #65 Vice Motorsport Ferrari all making their series debut, respectively.